


5 Facts About Harry Greenwood

by Cassandra14



Category: Charmed (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Being a whitelighter has a price, Gen, If you're looking for happy go elsewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 18:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20661758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassandra14/pseuds/Cassandra14
Summary: 1. He's memorized his birthday.2. His favorite possession is a KitchenAid stand mixer.3. Some days, he wants to forget.4. Once a month, he gets a manicure.5. He loves each and every one of his charges.





	5 Facts About Harry Greenwood

_1\. He’s memorized his birthday. _

It’s January 20, 1985.

At least, that is what his driver’s license and birth certificate say. It’s what he repeats when carded at bars or when being asked to verify his identity. 

It’s the eighty-five he has to concentrate on. 

Three charges ago, it was eighty. 

Three charges from now, it’ll be ninety. 

The January 20th stays constant. It’s easier that way. 

He didn’t get to pick the date. If he had, he thinks he might have chosen sometime in spring when everything is coming back to life, vibrant and colorful, or maybe early December when snow is still novel and the holidays are bright ahead. 

Not smack in the middle of drab January, past all the festivities, with its grey skies and grey slush. 

But he has it memorized now. It’s second nature now. He might as well keep it. 

It’s just a number for the paperwork anyways. 

* * *

_2\. His favorite possession is a KitchenAid stand mixer._

Over the decades, he’s repainted it several times. It started vanilla white but has since been tangerine orange, cherry red, mint green, and banana yellow. 

It’s currently a blueberry blue. 

It’s gotten new bowls, new attachments, a new motor, but still works just as well as the day he bought it.

Cookies, cakes, muffins, meringues, pastry, and pies - it’s seen it all. 

Other people have heirloom dining tables or handmade rocking chairs or vintage roll top desks. They have the ugly yet absurdly comfortable couch from a garage sale, the vanity set passed down from their grandmother, the coffee table they purchased with their very first paycheck. 

Harry has his KitchenAid. Furniture is hard to move again and again; it’s heavy and gets damaged and you never know what you’ll actually have room for. And shipping it across states, across countries, across oceans is just too much trouble and expense. 

The KitchenAid is enough. 

It’s the first thing he unpacks and the last thing he boxes back up. 

* * *

_3\. Some days, he wants to forget. _

He’s a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather. 

The knowledge sits in his chest. It weighs on his heart. 

He wonders what story his son has told about him. 

Was it a story about a father who loved him, loved him beyond all measure, who would do anything, _ anything_, for him? 

Or was it a story about a father who abandoned him? Who did wrong and was sent away and never came back? 

Both are true. 

He imagines letters, phone calls, meetings - _ I love you, I didn’t choose to leave you, I would have come back, I didn’t know you existed, I’m sorry I wasn’t there, please forgive me _\- that will never happen. 

He’s a ghost. Ghosts should stay buried, not disturb the living with their cries. 

Some days, he wishes his memories had stayed buried too. 

* * *

_4\. Once a month, he gets a manicure. _

There’s a little salon and spa a few streets away from campus. Nothing extravagant but a decisive step up from strip mall NAIL places. 

He has a standing appointment on the first Tuesday of the month, one thirty. 

Emily smiles at him when he arrives, five minutes early. She talks about her kids - Natalie won second place in the science fair and Simon is looking after the neighbors’ dog while they’re on vacation - as she brushes the paraffin wax onto his right hand, then wraps it in plastic and covers it with a mitten. 

She switches to the left, starting with lotion, and pressing hard against the tension that builds in his fingers and wrists. She tells him about the camping trip being planned for the summer - they’re thinking about Canada. 

He hmms at the right times, but Emily always seems to understand that he’s not going to be an active participant in the conversation and is just allowing her voice to wash over him. 

Tomorrow, his hands will be stained with demon gore. He’ll breathe in rot and sulfur, wincing at the screech of some winged hell-beast. There’ll be lives on the line. 

But that’s tomorrow. Right now, the warmth of the wax soaks into more than his skin. There’s lavender in air, soft music playing, and the greatest concern is damaged cuticles. 

* * *

_ 5\. He loves each and every one of his charges. _

There are Whitelighters who believe it’s best to keep a distance between themselves and the witches they guide. 

The Council had subscribed to the same policy. Keep it professional, you're not there to be their friend. 

Harry thinks that, if he were smarter, he’d probably agree. 

Fiona had wanted to be a painter. He’d teleported her to Paris for her birthday; they’d wandered the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie. Monet’s water lilies had been her favorite. They're carved into her headstone and he brings cut ones when he visits. 

He always had chocolate chip cookies in the jar for Shannon. She liked them best straight from the oven, smearing chocolate on the pages of her spellbooks. When they stopped treatment, he brought a zip-lock full to her hospice room, keeping them warm with a touch of power that was useless against stage four ovarian cancer. 

Macy still calls Marisol, Marisol. She doesn’t notice the way Maggie hangs on every word she says about her father, their father. Mel scowls at the phone and stabs ignore when Ray calls. Harry offers tea and hugs and someone to rant to and sometimes, sometimes thinks very unkind thoughts about parents who could have been there - even if only from a distance - and weren’t. 

When he’d challenged her and Wendy had mastered all of the Futhark runes and their meanings in three days, she’d demanded a forfeit from him. She’d painted his nails bright fuchsia. Eight years later, he was halfway round the world in Melbourne when the news found him, too late to attend the funeral. He walked into the nearest drugstore, bought the most vivid pink polish he could find, and ignored the sideways looks he received for the next two weeks. 

It would be easier if he could stay detached. 

But he can’t. 

It’s not who he is. 

**Author's Note:**

> This wouldn't let me alone until I wrote it. Hopefully I'll have some happier work for you soon. Be gentle - I've only watched the series through once. 
> 
> My headcanon is that there aren't enough Whitelighters for every witch (or even group of witches) to have their own permanently. So Whitelighters are only assigned for the first year or two, and then have to move on.


End file.
